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Lewis Mumford Biography

Lewis Mumford, KBE (October 19, 1895 – January 26, 1990) was an American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic. Particularly noted for his study of cities and urban architecture, he had a broad career as a writer. Mumford was influenced by the work of Scottish theorist Sir Patrick Geddes and worked closely with his associate the British sociologist Victor Branford.

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Lewis Mumford Quotes

Nothing about his life is more strange to [man] or more unaccountable in purely mundane terms than the stirrings he finds in himself, usually fitful but sometimes overwhelming, to look beyond his animal existence and not be fully satisfied with its immediate substance. He lacks the complacency of the other animals: he is obsessed by pride and guilt, pride at being something more than a mere animal, built at falling short of the high aims he sets for himself.

Built, Fall, Men, Pride, Terms

One of the functions of intelligence is to take account of the dangers that come from trusting solely to the intelligence.

Account, Functions, Intelligence, Ironic, Irony, Trusting

For most Americans, progress means accepting what is new because it is new, and discarding what is old because it is old.

Accepting What Is, Americans, Discarding, Mean, Progress

Nothing is unthinkable, nothing impossible to the balanced person, provided it comes out of the needs of life and is dedicated to life's further development.

Needs, Development, Impossible, Life, Provided

Don't take the will for the deed; get the deed.

Advice, Ambition, Deed, Deeds, Take

Without leisure there can be neither art nor science nor fine conversation, nor any ceremonious performance of the offices of love and friendship.

Art, Ceremonious, Conversation, Love And Friendship, Office

This metropolitan world, then, is a world where flesh and blood is less real than paper and ink and celluloid.

Blood, Celluloid, Ink, Real, World

In its revolt against congestion and sordor, a space-hungry generation has, I fear, developed eyes that are bigger than its stomach.

Against, Congestion, Eye, Generations, Space, Stomach

Life is an art we are required to practice without preparation, a score that we play at sight even before we have mastered our instruments.

Art, Happy Life, Mastered, Practice, Sight

The timelessness of art is its capacity to represent the transformation of endless becoming into being.

Art, Becoming, Endless, Transformation

Western society has accepted as unquestionable a technological imperative that is quite as arbitrary as the most primitive taboo: not merely the duty to foster invention and constantly to create technological novelties, but equally the duty to surrender to these novelties unconditionally, just because they are offered, without respect to their human consequences.

Arbitrary, Merely, Novelty, Offered, Society, Technology

Above all we need, particularly as children, the reassuring presence of a visible community, an intimate group that enfolds us with understanding and love, and that becomes an object of our spontaneous loyalty, as a criterion and point of reference for the rest of the human race.

Children, Criterion, Human, Intimate, Loyalty, Race

When vitality runs high, death takes men by surprise. But if they close their eyes to this possibility, what they gain in peace they lose in sensibility and significance.

Eye, Lose, Peace, Running, Sensibility, Vitality

Every transformation of humanity has rested upon deep stirrings and intuitions, whose rationalized expression takes the form of a new picture of the cosmos and the nature of the human.

Expression, Human, Humanity, Intuition, Rested, Stirrings

Man's Chief purpose. . . is the creation and preservation of values; that is what gives meaning to our civilization, and the participation in this is what gives significance, ultimately, to the individual human life.

Civilization, Individual, Meaning, Men, Significance, Wisdom

War vies with magic in its efforts to get something for nothing.

Magic, Peace, Ubuntu, Vies, War

Trend is not destiny.

Destiny, Trend, Trends

Mechanical instruments, potentially a vehicle of rational human purposes, are scarcely a blessing when they enable the gossip of the village idiot and the deeds of the thug to be broadcast to a million people each day.

Blessing, Thug, People, Scarcely, Million

By fashion and built-in obsolescence the economies of machine production, instead of producing leisure and durable wealth, are duly cancelled out by the mandatory consumption on an even larger scale.

Consumption, Fashion, Instead, Leisure, Machine, Machines

Nothing endures except life: the capacity for birth, growth, and renewal.

Birth, Capacity, Except, Growth, Immortality, Life

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